While Friday’s order states that the new work requirement applies to “single adults,” the modification appears to also impact families without children. “Importantly, we also look at work history and count recent employment towards requirements so clients are not penalized for recent job loss.” “There has always been an employment requirement for CityFHEPS, and this nominal modification in work hours will help standardize eligibility criteria across populations so families with children do not have more stringent requirements than single adults, while further streamlining and expediting the processing of vouchers for shelter residents,” a Department of Social Services spokesperson said. Reached Saturday, the Adams administration emphasized its decision to reduce work requirements for families with children, and said standardizing across populations brings CityFHEPS more in line with state and federal voucher programs.* “The team is still deciding how we’re going to move forward with the entire package,” Adams told reporters. He would not say Friday if he plans to sign the bills, all of which passed with a veto-proof majority of 41-7. “I continue to urge the mayor to sign our bills,” she added.īut Adams has been critical of the Council’s package, saying it will be too costly and that broadening eligibility will ramp up competition for existing voucher holders. “If you don’t have a job, which means that you are in a difficult financial position and end up in a shelter, then you can’t get out of a shelter without a job.” “It’s sort of a catch-22 at this time,” she told City Limits Saturday. In a Friday release, the Council said doing so would help people pursue work and housing at the same time.īronx Councilmember Pierina Sanchez is the primary sponsor of the bill that would eliminate work requirements. Meanwhile, a package of bills recently passed by the City Council would entirely remove employment as a prerequisite for accessing a voucher, in addition to raising the income threshold and helping people apply before entering shelter. “If they want people to work, get them out of shelter, get people stably housed, and it’s much easier for them to get a job.” “It’s the Giuliani ethos that you want to punish people for being poor and teach people a lesson about the value of hard work,” he told City Limits, referring to the former mayor who instituted a series of work requirements to the city’s welfare programs in the 1990s. Under the program, established in 2018, most voucher holders pay part of their income in rent, up to 30 percent, and the city covers the rest, up to a fixed maximum.Įd Josephson, a supervising attorney with the civil reform unit at the Legal Aid Society, condemned the new work-requirement language. Previously, adult households only had to demonstrate that they had worked “ any number of hours” per week for the last 30 days in order to qualify for a City Family Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement, or CityFHEPS, voucher. “This change will create uniformity across populations in shelter,” according to Friday’s order, which maintains exceptions for those over the age of 60, as well as people receiving federal disability benefits. This marks the second reduction in work requirements for families in shelter since November, when the administration reduced it from 30 hours to 14. Unmentioned at Friday’s press conference and ceremonial signing is a new work requirement to qualify for a voucher-10 hours per week for adult-only households.Īdditionally, a 14-hour work requirement for families with children has been cut to 10. “Today, we are damming one.”īut a review of the six-page notice reveals that his pen strokes opened up a new rivulet. “There are many rivers that are feeding the sea of homelessness,” he said. The order also added a new work requirement for adults in shelter.īefore signing an emergency rule on Friday eliminating the 90-day waiting period for shelter residents to apply for city-issued rental vouchers, Mayor Eric Adams used a river analogy. Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography OfficeMayor Eric Adams signing emergency rules eliminating the 90-day length-of-stay requirement for CityFHEPS housing vouchers on Friday.
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